I'm the environment editor at Forbes. Before joining Forbes in April 2011, I wrote about all things green and tech as a contributor to The New York Times, a senior editor at Fortune and an assistant managing editor at Business 2.0 magazine. I previously was the business editor at the San Jose Mercury News and during the (first) dot-com era served as a senior writer and senior editor at The Industry Standard (RIP).

Electric Car Sales Hit Another Record

Electric car sales reached a record in November for the fourth consecutive month as new models like the Ford C-Max Energi plug-in electric hybrid helped juice buyer interest.

According to analyst Aaron Chew of the Maxim Group, dealers sold 7,600 electric cars in November, bringing total sales for 2012 to 47,500 to date. Chew expects the year to end with sales of 56,000 electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

That of course is but a rounding error for most carmakers. Ford, for instance, sold 177,673 cars in November alone and electric vehicle sales are just .4% of total U.S. automotive sales for the year to date.

And while the slow but steady trend in electric car sales depends in part on various incentives – Nissan Leaf sales jumped after the automaker offered $199 leases and $5,000 price breaks – the introduction of new models has helped boost sales.

Ford sold 1,259 of its C-Max Energi in November just a month after the plug-in electric hybrid was introduced. That came close to the Chevrolet Volt, which recorded sales of 1,519 for the month and was not far behind the Toyota Prius plug-in, which had sales of 1,766 in November, according to Maxim.

Chew also offered some Tesla tidbits, reporting that the Silicon Valley electric carmaker delivered an estimated 1,150 of its Model S sports sedans in November.

“Despite just launching in late June 2012, this would propel TSLA to No. 5 in U.S. EV deliveries in November 2012,” Chew wrote.

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But they are much cleaner when you consider how much electricity it takes to refine gas. You can drive 20 miles in an electric car with the amount of electricity it takes to make one gallon of gas. And, electricity can come from renewable energy sources. Buy American! (energy)

I think this makes a lot of sense. The electric cars out there right now are good products, and as we’ve seen the prices start to edge down the sales are going up. I personally think electric cars over time will be the car of the future. In general they are better products, they have less moving parts, require less maintenance, cost less to drive, and are much cleaner(That’s because most places aren’t 100 percent coal powered, for those that would say, BUT they’re powered by coal.) I think if you look at the price continue to drop, and the range get longer the question becomes when will the public start buying in, in a major way?

This is the question of course. The transition will take a decided turn for big numbers somewhere between 2013-2015. It depends a lot on gas, whether the oil companies pull another refinery shut down, or we get that sought after carbon tax. Just today on KCRW’s “To the Point” they discussed the carbon tax in a way I’ve never heard. While still tough to pull off, like gay marriage, it’s inevitable.

The society that transitions fastest to renewable electricity for running most of its transportation will succeed, those that wait till the end will suffer. The economics are clear. Oil will only get more expensive, and no matter what they found in N. Dakota, it’ll eventually run out. Renewable electricity, on the other hand, will only get cheaper.

I bought a solar PV system in 2002, then I bought my first EV. For the past ten years, I’ve run my house and car on sunlight with an electric bill of about $100/year. I haven’t been to a gas station since 2002 but I’ve driven 121,000 miles – on sunlight.

The solar system paid for itself after 8 years. For the rest of my life, I get free energy from the sun to run my home and car.

You can do this, too.

There are over ten plugin cars on the market with more coming every few months. SUVs, trucks, commuter cars, and long distance cars like Tesla’s Model S, the “best car in the world”. As a matter of fact, the Tesla Model S is the best car in history.

We’ll all go electric over time, it’s just so much better than internal combustion in every way. The sooner you do it, the happier you’ll be.

I wonder how many of these electric cars were sold to the Federal, State and Local governments? Also how many were sold to GE? If Tesla sold 1,150 model S in November how many new oders with deposits did they take in in November?

Probably around 10 – 15%. Unfortunately, not a higher percentage, a lot of money could have been saved in those budgets with these plug-ins but competing industry influence is the tail that wags the dog when it comes to actual decision making… Tesla is backed up with about 6 months of orders, they finally scaled up production to 400 per week…

For Tesla, reservations were reported as up 15% last quarter and 30% year-over-year. According to folks reporting their reservation numbers on the TMC forums, that was about 54/day during November. Since then, they have been gaining, thanks to the additional exposure they’ve received by more cars being in customer hands and receiving multiple car of the year awards.

To the best of my knowledge, none of their sales have been to federal, state or local governments, or to GE. I doubt you’ll see any postal workers making their rounds in a Model S.

Not at all. Most everyone charges at home and doesn’t need public charging. It’s nice when you get it, but having 80-100 miles of range each day is more than enough for most folks.

There are lots of fast chargers finally getting installed in CA. We’ve got several thousand “Level 2″ charge stations (240 volt) that are being added to by the dozens every day. Lots of jobs installing these things. There will be a need for millions of charge stations over the next decades.

Instead of shipping $800 billion each year to the oil companies, we’ll be giving about 20% of that to the utilities, and the rest we keep in our pockets. We’ll spend this money mostly on local goods and service and generate lots of jobs n the process.

I built an electric car by converting an MG Midget. I use it as my daily commuter vehicle and put 4,000 miles on it last year. I can get over 100 miles on a charge with it. I’m glad to see sale picking up, but I’m still disapointed with the overall acceptance. I think that there must be many people like me who have a small car they commute in. The electric cars make sense when used like this. If I need to go on a longer trip, I use the other vehicle my family normally uses. I really like the idea that if I need to run to the store to buy a small item, it doesn’t cost me more in gas than the item costs itself.Converting a car to electric isn’t for everyone, but if you’d like to see some details about my car you can visit my site. electricmgmidget.com

Thats huge news from Tesla. To ship over 1,100 cars in a month is a huge acheivement both in logistics, manufacturing and marketing. And brings in over $50M. The market is changing with real cars for real peope that happen to be electric.